


The Golden Kids

by thoughtsthatfester



Series: Love is a dirty trick [1]
Category: Veep
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 13:01:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7440280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtsthatfester/pseuds/thoughtsthatfester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her” – Oscar Wilde </p><p>	(Or what happened between Dan and Amy the first time)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

“A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her” – Oscar Wilde 

(Or what happened between Dan and Amy the first time)

 

 

 

It is not love at first sight and but it is a chance meeting. They’re introduced by his former boss, her current boss. The congresswoman’s chief of staff has to go put out a fire and Amy is the most senior staffer around. Amy is only one step above an intern but she has to take the meeting with Dan anyway. 

He tries to flirt with her. 

She isn’t charmed. She knows her pantsuit doesn’t do anything for her legs and that her face is always doing this unpleasant disgusted sort of thing. He is flirting with her to get what he wants and she sees right through him and will not cooperate. 

He nearly storms out when she can’t help him.

She confesses that this is her first week on the job and that he can go fuck himself. 

He laughs as he leaves and tells her he’ll reschedule. He does not forget her name. 

 

 

Two nights later he runs into her at a bar. 

“Amy Brookheimer,” he says, with that self-satisfied smirk she comes to hate. Not tonight. Tonight she is charmed. 

“Hello, Dan Egan.” She is four beers in and far more pleasant than the stressed out staffer in the office on Wednesday. 

“You survived your first week in D.C. Congrats. I should buy you a drink.” At first, he means to cultivate a business relationship. She’s got balls – enough that she told him to go fuck himself. She’ll go far in this town. She might be useful down the line. 

“I think I’m the one that owes you a drink. Thank you for not telling Rosen about our meeting. You really saved my ass in there. I shouldn’t have been so rude. I just lost my temper.” She smiles and he sees something he didn’t see in the meeting earlier that week. It helps that she’s not wearing a pantsuit. She’s got a sundress on and looks girlish. She is 22 and this town hasn’t ruined her yet. Amy is all of 22 but thinks she can change the world. He knows better now. And soon she’ll learn to trade the sundress for a work dress sans blazer. You never know who you’re going to bump into at the bar. 

“Don’t worry about it. This town will do that. I fucked up much worse my first week.” It’s a lie but one she is happy to believe. It makes her smile and shit she’s really very pretty when she smiles. 

In the end she buys the first round and he buys the second and third. They drink domestic beer and they talk about themselves. At the core, they’re both narcissists but they even manage to listen when the other is talking. 

“It’s not even really my first week,” she confesses. “I grew up here.” 

“Where’d you go to school?”

“Penn.”

“Oh, I went there for a year of law school.”

“Just a year?” she asks with a smile. 

“It was more work than I expected and not nearly enough schmoozing. It did get me the internship that landed me my first real job here though.”

“And where did you go for undergrad?”

“Harvard.”

“No wonder you’re so smug.”

He grasps his chest in mock horror, “I’m wounded.”

She laughs. She’s pretty when she laughs. Even prettier than when she smiles. 

“What did you study?” he asks. “Political science?”

“Yes. Am I that transparent?”

“Kind of.” 

“What about you?”

“English. I had no idea I wanted to work in politics. I interned at an investment bank in college.”

“And how was that?”

“Less fun than law school.”

She laughs and he buys her a tequila shot. She thinks that when he kisses her later he will probably taste like salt. 

They spend the next half hour talking in a dark corner. His hand makes its way to her thigh and she thinks shit. No one ever really wanted her in college. And now here she is, her first week with a real job, and she is sitting in a bar and a cute guy has his hand on her thigh. Not only that, but he saved her ass earlier that week. Things are coming together like she pretended to know but secretly hoped that they would. 

And then her roommate interrupts. They’d come to the bar together and Katie had abandoned her for some guy she went to high school with. She’s now in tears demanding they go home. Something about a dead grandma. 

“I’m really sorry,” she tells Dan. “Rain check?”

“Of course. I’ll call you.”

“You don’t even have my number.”

“Fine. Can I have your number?” It’s flirty but he’s disappointed. He was getting excited about sleeping with her tonight. 

She scribbles it on his hand with a pen she pulled out of her tiny little purse and then runs off to get in the cab with her roommate. She is 22 and not ready to tell her roommate to fuck off and take a cab home alone. Instead she rubs the crying girl’s back as she cries and tries not to resent her for ruining her night. 

Dan does not call on Saturday or Sunday which Katie assures her is perfectly normal. Amy is not going to get her hopes up about Dan Egan. He’s probably too handsome to want anything to do with her. And at 25 he’s probably interested in more sophisticated women. She had a sundress on at the bar for fuck’s sake. Everyone else looked like they came from work. She does not make that mistake again. 

Dan doesn’t have to call because they run into each other at a policy meeting on Monday morning. She’s sitting in (well, not really; she’s mostly just standing in the back to make the congresswoman look like she has a bigger entourage than she actually does). Dan’s sitting in and by sitting in he’s actually sitting in and taking notes. 

“Hey, want to go out for a drink on Friday?” It’s half-whispered. He doesn’t really want her boss, his former boss to hear. 

“Yeah,” she responds after they’ve finished chatting in the hallway while the elected officials have a private conversation inside. 

They end up seeing each other two more times that week. Their bosses are working together and if she believed in bullshit like fate she might think that this was fate. They end up ensconced in corners commenting on the events around them. She’s bitchier and meaner and smarter than he gave her credit for. 

If he’s being honest he’d hoped to like her less. He’d taken the blame for the meeting gone bad and faked an emergency when he’d been forced to reschedule. She owed him. He hoped to use that at some point for when he made a play for the chief of staff to the congresswoman’s job. He probably shouldn’t fuck her if he’s trying to be her boss. He really wants to fuck her though.

It almost happens on Friday when they meet for drinks. She wears a sleeveless dress and has her hair up in this sloppy messy bun. It’s a hot as hell night because it’s July in D.C. and it might as well be hell – all the same people. 

He kisses her this time and she tastes like gin. He’s got one hand in her hair and one on her waist and he’s a really fucking good kisser. She forgets that they’re seated at the bar and it’s crowded and it’s D.C. and anyone could walk in and see him. She doesn’t give a shit because Dan Egan is a fucking good kisser. 

And then his phone rings and he’s sorry but he has to answer. 

“Egan,” he answers. She runs her fingers through his hair lazily while he yesses the person on the other end of the line. “Fuck!” he nearly shouts as his other hand grabs her wrist and stops her. 

“What?” She mouths. 

“Yeah, yes. Yes, sir. I’ll be right there, sir. No, sir, I haven’t been drinking. I’ll be there in ten.”

“You’re leaving?” she pouts. She looks so cute but he doesn’t have time. 

“My boss just died.”

“Congressman Davies?”

“Massive stroke.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, so I have to go into the office and sort this out. The communications director is on vacation with his family this week so I have to go write the statement.”

“Congratulations.”

“I imagine you’ll be getting a call from your boss soon. If I know Rosen he’ll be on top of this, especially because of the bill.”

“But I’m drunk.”

“This is D.C. half of our government in drunk half the time. Let’s go.”

He drives to the building that houses both their offices. She gets the call as soon as she buckles her seatbelt. They ride over in silence but he kisses her before they get out of the car and they walk into the building together. 

Congressman Davies’ death sends both their lives into a chaotic spiral for the next couple of weeks. They don’t see each other very much. She barely even has time to think about him. Barely. 

They meet for lunch and he tells her he’s been asked to be communications director and a senior campaign advisor for the democrat running in the special election. She congratulates him and she really means it because she really fucking likes him but it means he’s got to head up to Massachusetts and he won’t be around for six weeks. 

He doesn’t call her and she’s not about to call him. She catches him on the news a couple of times next to the candidate. He looks busy and stressed. She cuts him slack and throws herself into her job. Everyone trusts her more and she’s got more responsibility and the congresswoman tells her she has a bright future in politics. 

Dan’s candidate wins and she calls to congratulate him. It’s loud when he answers and he’s so fucking excited and he tells her he’ll be back in D.C. soon and that he’s going to take her out on a real date, their first date, next Saturday night. 

She works that Saturday morning and then pretends not to care when she gets dressed for their date. Amy tries on half a dozen outfits and her hands are shaking a bit when she puts on her eyeliner. She ends up wearing a little black dress because it’s September but it’s still hot as hell in D.C. 

He picks her up and they go to a cute little restaurant and they talk non-stop and by the time dessert comes she’s convinced that together they can rule the world. She doesn’t think he’s any smarter than her, but she thinks he’s more ruthless. She admires that about him. He’s cocky but he’s handsome and young and smart and he’s earned the right to be cocky. 

When she’s around him she feels giddy. No one has ever called her that – she’s shrill, not giddy. She can’t stop smiling. She hates smiling. It hurts he cheeks and she thinks she might get lockjaw. He tells her she has a pretty smile and it makes her cheeks hurt even more. 

He takes her home and she confesses that she’s not very experienced. She’s had sex, of course, but only twice and it wasn’t very good either time. She doesn’t tell Dan that part. 

He’s pleased at her inexperience. It’s cute. It works with this innocent thing she has going for her. D.C. will harden her and that will fade but she’s 22 and innocent and he’s going to fuck her. He’s going to teach her how to fuck him the way he wants to be fucked. Any guy she fucks after him is going to get exactly what he wants, not necessarily what they want. It’s the ultimate power play. 

She’s self-conscious when he pulls off her dress in a way he didn’t expect. He gives her a hickey like he’s a sixteen year old boy to prove that he owns her or whatever that shit meant back then. It’s a power thing. She’ll have to wear a silk scarf to work and when he sees her in the hallway he’ll have the satisfaction of knowing he did that to her. 

He gives her her first organism with his mouth. She squeals and swears and he swears he’s never heard anything so intoxicating. He wants to be the one to make her make that sound again and again and again. 

He’s gentle when he fucks her because he can tell it will be rough later. She looks like the girl who likes to have her hair pulled in bed. She, of course, doesn’t know that yet but he does. He’s gentle because he’s not certain she’s telling him the truth about having done this before. At the very least he knows that no one has ever gone down on her. He holds the power. 

She spends the night and he makes her breakfast in the morning. She wears one of his shirts. He should tell her not to because he doesn’t let women do that. She sits at his kitchen table and reads the newspaper and he doesn’t even want to kick her out. That never happens. Maybe she holds some of the power. 

It’s the start of something. He’s not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing but it’s certainly a thing – him and Amy Brookheimer. She’s probably going to destroy him one day but he doesn’t give a shit. He likes her.


	2. Two

“To fall in love you have to be in the state of mind for it to take, like a disease.” – Nancy Mitford 

 

 

They meet in July and fuck in September. It’s the longest he’s ever taken to fuck someone. Well, there was that one girl in college who was immune to his charms but he’s forgotten about her – mostly. He would have done it sooner but he was off handling communications for the special election. They don’t go on their second date until October, but they see each other all the time. They see each other at least a few times a week in the hallways at work and sometimes for lunch or coffee or a mid-day chat where they bounce ideas off one another. They work really well together, she decides. They’d be a really great team. 

His boss tries to poach her away after she says something smart in a meeting between the congressman and congresswoman. Okay, it’s not exactly a job offer, but he tells her that he thinks she’s smart and that he’d give her a job in a heartbeat. She thanks him but elects to stay with the congresswoman. She likes working for female politicians. She’d also hate to have to stop this thing with Dan. She leaves that last part out. 

They fuck at least three times a week. Mostly at his place but sometimes at hers if they see each other on a weeknight. Katie’s a consultant so she spends most of the week in boring cities working on boring excel spreadsheets. Sometimes he sleeps over to make her apartment feel less empty. He keeps a spare suit at her apartment in case of emergencies. She gets him a toothbrush but neither one of them ever mentions it.

She likes him best at 6 a.m. He’s slow to wake up. He’s soft and quiet and contemplative and sometimes she’ll get out of the shower and he’ll say something brilliant. There’s no bravado at 6 a.m. She’s the first to admit that he’s so often an insufferable ass, but he’s not at 6 a.m. It’s her favorite time of day. 

It’s really casual and neither one of them wants to label it. But, fuck, Amy kind of wants to label it. She’s never had a boyfriend before and isn’t that what Dan is? They spend so much fucking time together. He even meets her mother and sister. It’s by accident of course. Dan’s out of coffee and eggs so they end up going out to breakfast. It’s a crisp fall day so they walk. She wears one of his sweatshirts and jeans and uggs and her long blonde hair is back in a ponytail. He’s in basketball shorts and he looks unbelievably douchey in his ray-bans and fratagonia quarter zip. 

Her mom sees them first. Amy pivots and starts pulling Dan in the other direction. She’s not doing this. Not now. Not now that she looks like the poster child for the morning after. 

“Amy!” she smiles. And god, she’s so fucking suburban. And what the fuck is she doing walking down the street on a Sunday morning in D.C.? She should be back in Maryland gardening or something. 

Amy pretends not to hear her. “Fuck my tits,” she curses under breath. 

“Amy Eleanor Brookheimer! I know that’s you. Don’t pretend you don’t see me.”

Finally, she spins around. “Hi mom.”

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your boyfriend?” Her mom smiles this big smile, like she’s flirting with Dan or something. 

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she retorts. 

“Hi Mrs. Brookheimer, I’m Dan Egan.” He shakes her hand and does what he does best. 

Dan charms her mother while she stands there fiddling with the drawstrings of his sweatshirt. She understands why he doesn’t want to put labels on things. She doesn’t want him spending holidays with her family. She doesn’t want to meet his shitty older brother and she doesn’t want to take Amtrak to Massachusetts and sit in his dining room in Wellesley for Thanksgiving. She wants to fuck him and she wants to take over the world. 

 

Days later he meets Amy’s sister. Amy’s sister is not so polite and the experience is not so pleasant. 

Amy is fucking Dan. Amy is fucking Dan on the couch because her roommate is on a cruise for the week with her sorority sisters. Amy is fucking Dan so hard that she doesn’t even hear the fucking door open. 

“So Amy, this is the boyfriend?” her sister’s voice startles them both, most of all Amy who screams bloody murder as she gropes around for a blanket to cover them up. 

“What the living fuck are you doing here?”

“Mom said she saw you with a man and I didn’t believe it so I stole mom’s key. I didn’t think I’d actually get to meet him or that he’d be younger than fifty.”

Amy kicks her out and then resumes fucking Dan. He’s turned on by how loudly she screams at Sophie until she closes the door and leaves them alone. 

He pretends he doesn’t realize how significant it is that he’s met both her mom and sister. Well, he’s met her mom. He doesn’t really count the second thing as a proper meeting. 

 

Other people’s assumptions are uncomfortable. Maybe that’s why she never tells Katie he sleeps over during the week sometimes. As far as Katie is concerned he’s just some guy that texts her on the weekend to meet him at bars and then invites her to sleep over. Amy tells her he only took her out on that date so that she’d fuck him. If she knew about the weekday sleepovers she might assume that they have feelings for each other. They don’t. That’s not what this is. She’s embarrassed that she wished, even for half a millisecond, that he’d be her boyfriend. 

It’s not like they talk about feelings or their hopes and dreams for the future. They’re not that kind of couple. Hell, they aren’t even a couple. Mostly they talk about policy and politics. Their pillow talk consists of determining yays and nays for new pieces of proposed legislation or guessing who is going to run against one of the senators from Illinois in the next election. They do not whisper sweet nothings. They do not make plans for a future together. They do not talk about anything but work. 

 

 

It’s November when he notices how much D.C. has already hardened her. He wakes up to the sound of her screaming into her phone. It’s hot. She’s powerful now and he’s always fucking loved power. He rolls over and falls back asleep to the sound of her yelling at an intern. It’s white noise for him. 

She gets a promotion they’re spending all their free time together. They’re not dating. They’ve only technically been on two dates. Well, two nighttime dates. Neither one of them counts breakfast in the morning because they’re exhausted from fucking each other and they need to eat and neither one of them keeps much food in their kitchens. The lunches and coffee are policy talk. That’s not romantic. That’s politics and business as usual. 

 

They go out to dinner for her birthday and it’s their third official date. They have gone from a ‘couple’ of dates to a ‘few’. That is a massive problem especially now that he thinks he actually feels something for her. He doesn’t love her because that would be absolutely fucking ridiculous. He likes her. A lot. He feels loyalty to her. This is D.C. and he shouldn’t feel loyalty to anyone. Hell, he’s not even this loyal to his own brother. He fucked his soon-to-be sister-in-law so he could blackmail her into giving him a job. Dan Egan is a lot of things but he’s not loyal. 

 

 

 

Five nights later he makes the mistake. 

 

 

She’s tied to his bedpost with the silk scarves he loves when she wears when he marks her neck with hickeys. He’s fucking her and she’s writhing beneath him and screaming as she comes. She’s clenched around him and he can’t help himself.

“Fuck.” He whispers. “I fucking love you.”

He can’t tell if she heard him because she never brings it up and she never says it back. He doesn’t want her to say it back because he doesn’t love her. What he said was a mistake when he was caught up in the moment of fucking. Dan Egan doesn’t love anyone. He loves himself and sometimes he loves his mother. He most certainly doesn’t love Amy Brookheimer. He loves fucking her but that’s it. 

 

 

It’s at a fundraising dinner that he finally figures out just how Amy Brookheimer is going to destroy him. 

He’s introduced to Senator Crystal’s pretty young daughter. She flirts openly with him and he tries to flirt back. She’s leggy and tan and has big blonde hair and huge fake tits which makes sense cause she’s from Texas and everything’s bigger in Texas – even the implants. He feels guilty. He never feels guilty – at least not since he got the hell away from the nuns at St. Margaret’s grammar school. He feels guilty and he should not. He is not dating Amy Brookheimer. He’s fucking her and he should be able to flirt with whomever he wants. The problem is, he doesn’t want to flirt with the Senator’s daughter. He wants to flirt with Amy and that is a serious fucking problem. A clusterfuck of epic proportions. 

 

He has to end it. He has to. All of this has gotten to be too much. It will be Christmas in a couple of weeks and they can’t do this anymore. Amy Brookheimer is a cancer to his career. She will destroy him and by the time he realizes it will be too late. She has not ruined him yet but she is going to – he’s got to get ahead of this. 

 

They don’t see each other because everyone is working furiously until Congress goes home for the holidays. He agonizes over how to end things with her. He thinks like a communications director, thinks about how best to deliver the message. In the end he elects to tell her nothing. He goes radio silent. He does not respond when she texts him to come sleep over the Tuesday after New Year’s. 

 

 

She finds out from Politico that he’s dating Senator Crystal’s daughter. He doesn’t give her the courtesy of ending things in person like an adult so she doesn’t give him the dignity of a response. She wants to erase his number from her phone but she knows it’s a bad idea. One day she may need him. Instead she changes his name in her phone to “Shitty McShitstain.” It’s funnier than “waste of time” or “do not call” – both of which she considered and then vetoed. 

He’s a piece of shit and a compulsive liar. He told her he loved her for fuck’s sake but he can’t break up with her in person like a grown-up. Not that they were dating. It was only three dates after all. He was never really interested in her. He wanted to fuck anything that he thought could advance his career. She wasn’t doing the job like Senator Crystal’s daughter apparently. He didn’t have the patience to wait until she actually had some power in this town and could help him out. 

She will destroy him from afar. She does not want to see him again or speak with him. If she does it will turn into trench warfare. World War One wasn’t fun for anyone. No, they will fight like it’s the fucking Cold War. She is the U.S. and he’s the fucking Soviet Union. He’s as a cold as a Russian winter anyway – and much shittier than communism. It’s a proxy war if anything. She sabotages him a couple of times – mostly because it helps her boss, not because she has any feelings towards Dan Egan. 

One day she will run this town and he will come crawling back to her asking for a job. She will not give him one. She will end his career and he’ll be forced to go back to suburban Massachusetts and get involved in local politics. He’ll have to become a local mayor or something. 

She donates the suit he left behind at her apartment to a homeless shelter. She could have burned it, but she thinks Dan would have hated it more knowing a homeless man was wearing the custom suit he got in Hong Kong on that trip he took two years ago to visit a friend from school. She throws his toothbrush in the garbage and forgets about the earrings she left on his nightstand. 

 

Dan Egan is a piece of shit and she can’t believe her judgment was so bad. She should have seen right through him. She would have if she were smarter and more sophisticated. She will never make the mistake of dating a D.C. guy again. 

They do an admirable job of avoiding each other. She works in the House and he works in the Senate. Senator Crystal hires him because Dan Egan only does things in order to advance his career. She can’t exactly figure out what he had planned for her, but it doesn’t matter. She’s ruthless and ambitious but even she can’t figure out how he was going to use her. That’s because he’s Patrick fucking Bateman. He probably even killed a prostitute for the thrill of it when he was working as an investment banker that one summer after junior year. Dan Egan is exactly the kind of fucked up shit that would torture animals as a child and kill hookers for the thrill of it. 

He tries not to think about Amy Brookheimer and he most certainly doesn’t have a Google alert for her. Okay, he does but it’s only so he can track her career from afar. He doesn’t want to ask anyone about her because it might get back to her and that’s the last thing he wants. He doesn’t want her to know that he still cares. He doesn’t care about her – only how she will one day help his career. That’s all this is. 

He did not love her. He never loved her. But it’s the closest he ever got which is why it needed to end. Loyalty to her would destroy his career. She’s a liability for him. He does an admirable job pretending he doesn’t miss her. 

It doesn’t take long for the thing with Senator Crystal’s daughter to blow up in his face. He may or may not have called her Amy when he was fucking her. It’s not his fault. They’re both blonde. And he covers his mistake by shouting “amazing” but it doesn’t save his pasty ass. She ends things and gets her daddy to fire him. He wonders if Amy takes pleasure in his public humiliation. He’s fired and goes off to Virginia to lick his wounds. He gets a job working for the governor. 

She gets a job working for Selina Meyer. She’s really fucking good at her job. Dan Egan was a mistake and a child and he deserves to have things blow up in his face. It’s karma. She gets the job for Meyer right after Dan bails on her. She has no choice but to toughen up and be as ruthless as he always knew she could be. 

 

Her mother thinks this new heartlessness is due to Dan. She asks about him on Christmas and she downplays the whole thing. He was just some guy. Not important at all. That’s how things work in D.C. 

“I think he broke your heart,” her mother tells her while they’re washing dishes.

“What?”

“You’re so unpleasant right now. You were never like this. You’re clearly heartbroken over Dan Egan. He was such a nice boy. You really should give it another shot with him.”

“Mom, stop! I was the one who ended things with him. I saw through him. He’s so charming and nice when you meet him but once you get to know him you learn to realize he’s a giant piece of shit. If you’d had more than one conversation with him then you’d know that. I don’t want to hear anyone mention Dan Egan’s name again. He was a complete waste of time.”

“Alright, Amy.” Her mother doesn’t believe a word she just said. Dan Egan broke her heart and that’s the end of the story. 

Years later he comes to her because he needs a job. She’s secretly thrilled because she got what she wanted all along. He’s still a piece of shit and he’ll never be anything more than a piece of shit. Okay, he’s not a bad speechwriter and he’s smart but he’s still a piece of shit. 

 

They’re a good team. She guesses that they always were. She is not 22 and giddy and making out with him in a bar. She’s his boss and she’s fucking good at what she does. 

 

 

 

It’s not until they start fucking again that she realizes they’re loyal to one another. They were loyal to each other before they started fucking again. One day she will probably follow him into hell. But at least she doesn’t love him. That would be ridiculous.


End file.
